Axtyl
by Luna Scorpion
Summary: Meet Yaniman Axtyl, a hive world thug, pressed in service in a penal legion. He will later escape them, wounded mortally he becomes one with a Rhino with a Chaos Marine chapter known as the Luna Scorpions. This is one in a series of the Luna Scorpions.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the rights to any character, setting or story line in the following submission.

intimidate, demoralize, emasculate, subjugate

Axtyl crept slowly, treads crunching over rock and bone, squelching in the mud between the ruined buildings. Grenade concussions exploded off in the distance, but deep inside the fog, it was hard to tell if it was twenty miles or twenty metres. Inside the hold of the MkIIc Rhino ten brothers of the Luna Scorpions held their bolt pistols and their breaths. Even the usually chittering gargoyles on his hull were quiet. Axtyl swept the heavy bolter back and forth in front of him, peering into the mist and smoke, and around corners for the enemy, Imperial Guardsmen. Their black and gray uniforms blending into the debris of buildings, mud and charred hulks. They would hide, but not from him.

Yaniman Axtyl closed the door behind the visitor separating the two of them from his boss. He never said a word as he escorted the most recent visitor down the hall, though all the while he was barraged by questions. "What did he mean?" "What's going to happen?" "Is he going to kill me?" The first two questions were irrelevant to Axtyl. But he was pretty sure he knew the answer to the last one. However, Axtyl did not presume to second-guess his boss. Instead, he kept his largely scarred and battered four fingered right hand (his third finger lost as an act of contrition) on the shoulder of the visitor and ushered his squeaking burden to the front door.

"Please, you have to tell me," he fell to his knees after being shoved through the front door. Axtyl drew his autopistol and placed it on the visitor's forehead, "Thank you for your visit today. Do have a nice day." He withdrew the pistol and closed the front door to the apartment.

Axtyl walked back to his boss' room at the end of the hall. The apartment was at one time like any other in the hive. Metal and synthetics, cold, wet and dark; as it was now under an unnatural layer of luxury. Plush carpets softened his footfalls, holo-picts on the wall, expensive cabinets filled with more expensive liquors. But no matter how much his boss added to the place it still looked, smelled and felt like a low-level hive rat hole.

He pushed through to his boss' room. Here was even more false opulence. Everything from the lights over the antique desk at which the king rat himself sat to the inlaid mosaic floor, was fashioned to give the frequent visitors an understanding that he was used to getting his money and his way.

"Yaniman," the boss said looking up from the pile on his desk. The boss always referred to people by their first name. Sometimes it was part of a concerted effort to put the other person into a subjective nature. Psychology, the boss claimed, was the best weapon. Axtyl grudgingly agreed. Most of the visitors to his boss left this room like the last one, a quivering, spineless mass of tears and pleas and snot. Axtyl felt almost soiled having to touch them. He could at least respect the ones that pretended they were not frightened. But never did Axtyl see what he wanted to see, what he would have done had he been confronted by the boss. No one ever attacked the boss. Nope they all just ran away. Mice running away from the rat king.

"Yes, sir." The boss was allowed to call everyone by first name, but few dared use anything but _sir_ when addressing the boss. Axtyl always used _sir_ when talking to the boss for two reasons. The first was it kept him from saying what sometimes came to mind when he looked at the boss. The boss was extremely fat, and even in the cold dampness that often crept into the boss' warren, his dark skin was shiny with sweat. The rat king looked nothing so much like a big black slug. The second reason was simple; he was the boss.

"Yaniman, I can trust you, yes?"

He hated the insult. Axtyl held up his right hand with the missing digit by way of answer.

"Commit this to memory."

Axtyl slid down in between piles of trash and discarded slabs of ferrocrete until he found a spot to strike out without being seen. Alone he would wait until his prey crossed his path. Not that he had to work alone, or even liked it. However, he had tasked Boxer, Szet, Whisper and Esaka with the second part of the boss' request. He would meet them when he was done here.

Normal response for a visitor to the boss was to run, and today's visitor was no different. He came down the pathway, splashing as he ran. There was only a few ways into and out of the boss' place, and Axtyl was pretty good at figuring which one the visitor would take. Once in a while they got away, but Axtyl just hired a hunter and would catch him or her eventually. This one, on the other hand, was predictable to a fault. Axtyl watched the figure in the darkness moving towards him, the light filtered in from one of the levels above, highlighting the visitor for a moment, then shadowing him, then highlighting again.

In the shadow of his blind, Axtyl drew a black knife from his boot and wrapped three fingers and a thumb tightly around its haft. He waited until the visitor was right in front of his hole before springing. He leapt with three tasks in his mind. As his boot sole connected with the visitor's kneecap and gave with a satisfying grinding crunch, the visitor was brought to a stop and down on his remaining good knee. Axtyl dropped out of his leap behind the visitor, wrapping his left arm around and under the visitor's neck, then plunged his blackened blade into the visitor's right lung, effectively preventing the visitor from screaming.

Two of the three tasks had been accomplished. Axtyl pulled the knife from the victim's back and pulled his body close. Frothing blood pumped onto their bodies, squelching as Axtyl muscled his bulk around, brought his left hand up along side the victim's face and twisted softly exposing the full of the victim's right side of his neck. Axtyl leaned in close to the victim's ear and placed the point of his knife in the hollow of his clavicle. Slowly he pushed the knife into the flesh. Blood flowed around the blade, down the victim's chest, back, arms, onto Axtyl, finally pooling on the ground.

"I will see that your sister is spared from your sins." A moment of comfort for the victim. Third task completed. Axtyl let go of the body only after it had stopped bleeding.

He moved in the shadows. Even this low in the hive, he could not just walk about drenched in another's blood. He slinked between deserted alleys, abandoned hab-units and other derelict buildings, buried under dozens of levels of the city above.

Turning down a vacant alley, he jogged quietly all the way to the back, left hand trailing on the side of building walls, slipped through the door, stepped in and then on the corpse of Szet.

"Well, what do we have here?" came a precise, but rather nasally, voice from deeper inside the room. An Arbiter stepped out from a darkened corner. He held his shotgun at his hip, but still pointing at Axtyl. His black polished armour reflected the light coming in from behind the doorway where Axtyl stood. Their armour clattered as six more Arbiters surrounded him, their lamps slung under their shotguns illuminated him. "You seem to be covered in a lot of blood. Explain." A different voice, someone was still in the darkness.

"Cut myself shaving." Axtyl squinted into the lights surrounding him. It was suicide to pull his autopistol, but the thought crossed his mind anyway. He contemplated how much he owed his boss. He glanced around at the slew of bodies on the floor. He didn't see the body of Whisper. The sniper may have found a point to pick off the squad of Arbiters. On the other hand, he could be mixed in with the unidentified corpses; or he could have fled at the sign of trouble. Even if Whisper had managed to find a good sniping position, Axtyl would not make it out of that firefight alive. Self preservation won out, he put his empty hands over his head.

The Arbiter that had addressed him before walked around Axtyl and removed the autopistol from its holster at his back. He heard the crackling of a stun baton just before he was knocked unconscious.

"Secure this one, and place him with the others going to the penal legion," came the voice from the shadows again.

He had been awake for a few minutes before he realized it. He tried to reach up to wipe his eyes but could not make his arms work. Instead, he focused his attention on prying his eyelids open. Finally successful, Axtyl found himself inside a brightly lit and very large room. He was sitting on a metal plank and was cold. His boots had been removed, bare feet on cold metal plating. His legs had been shackled at the ankles to a metal loop bolted to the floor, and evidently so were his wrists behind his back. The blood soaked clothes had not been removed, and they were crusted to his torso.

Axtyl kept his head down, but strained his eyes to their extreme peripherals. He was not the only one strapped to the metal plank. There was at least one other plank in front of him with six men that he could see on it. They too, were shackled and evidently asleep. To his right and left, one or more each.

There was a soft humming coming up from the floor that seemed to vibrate through Axtyl's bare feet and travel up to his teeth. With it came a faint sense of propulsion, of disjointed gravity. He was on a ship of some kind. For the first time in his life, he was off the planet he was born on. For that matter, first time out of the hive. He wondered if that was why he felt nauseous, fuzzy headed. Or if the stun baton had done more damage than it was supposed to. Perhaps everyone felt that way on his first flight off world.

Axtyl took a chance and pivoted his head to the sides. There was a dozen rows of hunched over men in the front of him as well as on both sides. Evidently, the Arbiters had turned him over to be press ganged into working for the Imperial Navy. Or, as he looked to the right at the baldhead of the man next to him, and the scar tattoos of some gang he was not familiar with, it was more likely he was on his way to an Imperial Guard penal legion. The ganger was snoring softly. He stared at the incapacitated man for a long time, trying to tell if he came from his hive, a different one, or possibly from some other planet.

He looked behind. There were hundreds of men like him in the room.

Around the room was a walkway two stories above what Axtyl thought of as the ground level. Stationary Guardsmen watched the room of convicts, many of the soldiers held lasguns or shotguns at the ready. Others slung them over their shoulders and walked their patrols. On the same level as Axtyl were other Guardsmen carrying stun batons. In the corner of the room stood a slender individual. He was draped in a long black greatcoat and held a peaked cap under his arm. An Imperial Commissar, no doubt, thought Axtyl. The Commissar surveyed the sleeping and still convicts. His eyes met Axtyl's, and momentarily fixed on him. Then slowly drifted on to size up the others.

Axtyl drifted off into unconsciousness again.

Some time must have passed when Axtyl opened his eyes again. He remembered a vision of a beast, white skinned full of sharp talons and teeth, but it was fading leaving only an acidy feeling in his stomach. Seemingly nothing had changed. Not the lights. Not the guards. Not even the Commissar seemed to have moved. His eyes closed again.

More time passed, Axtyl opened his eyes. One of Guardsmen on the ground level, a few rows in front of where he sat, was swinging his stun baton repeatedly. In a swift arc, like he was chopping wood with an axe, he brought the weapon down again and again on the head one of the convicts. Apparently he had been doing so for some time. The convict's head was a pulpy mess with an obvious indentation where the baton had been striking. One of his fellow Guardsmen attempted to restrain him. The psychotic jailer whipped his stun baton up and connected with his nose, a shower of blood as the second Guardsmen's feet flew out from under him and slammed to the floor. A shot rang out, another rain of blood. The crazed Guardsmen fell down, a las bolt hole in punched straight through his head.

The Commissar holstered his pistol. "You will not fail me now. We have only a little further to go in the warp. Remember your Emperor, and He will save you. Or I will."

His eyes closed. His mind drifted. Axtyl dreamed. The white beast returned and whispered in his ear something that he would not remember when he woke up. Then he was awake, and everything was different. He did not feel like they were moving anymore, but they were definitely not on solid ground. The dizzy nauseous feeling was gone, as well. Axtyl looked over to see if the Commissar was still in the same position, but he was gone from the room. The Guardsmen jailers were still there, and they still looked tense at the convicts, but most shouldered their weapons rather than pointing them at the shackled prisoners. Even the light was different, brighter or clearer. _Cleaner_, was what Axtyl thought.

His body was stiff from sitting for so long, shackled to the floor and the bench. He tried to stretch, and rocked side to side to get his blood circulating again. All he got for his pains, however, were pins and needles throughout his arms and legs and some irritated looks from his jailers.

Axtyl looked around again. The ganger next to him was awake, but just sat there, looking down at his own bare feet. His lips were moving, but Axtyl could not make out what he was whispering. For all he knew, the ganger could have been reciting a prayer to the Emperor. The convict on Axtyl's left side was also awake. An opposite of Axtyl was this one. Old, overweight and short, his legs barely touched the floor. He had a black mohawk and gold piercings all over his face. Axtyl had heard of humans that lived on high-gravity worlds that had over generations become squat, muscular little people. That's what this guy looked like, crossed with a pug faced dog Axtyl had as a boy. He was looking at Axtyl, smiling and apparently had been doing so for some time.

Axtyl held his gaze for another minute.

"What?" whispered Axtyl to the dog-faced dwarf. The dwarf stopped smiling and looked back down at his own misshapen feet. Axtyl turned away in time to see two Guardsmen approaching him. The first reached him and without a word, slapped him across the face with his stun baton. Axtyl's unconscious body slumped over.


	2. Chapter 2

Commissar Adrian Volnt reclined in the battered chair in his office. His boots perched upon the top of his ironwood desk; native to his own home world. Though he could not see it from his lounging position, a red obsidian Aquila was inlaid on the top of that desk. Volnt clasped his hands around a glass of amasec perched upon his stomach. Its contents catching the low diffused light of the glowglobes about the room, and warming his belly right about where it sat upon it. Mildly decent, the elixir did what it was supposed to do. Now that the ship, _Blind Fury_, had left the warp there was little chance the prisoners would become disturbed. Outward signs of possession would be evident. Even if they did revolt, they could not escape. Volnt could take a few moments to himself.

Holopicts hung on nearly every wall. In one he stood on Terra. As much as the thought pained him, he never wanted to return there. Volnt acknowledged few things in the known universe to cause him to fear, Terra was one of them. Keeping it up in its place on the wall was his chance to relive that fear everyday.

Another pic was older and was a place Adrian longed to go back to. His home. Though Volnt vowed to return only after he retired from service to his Emperor. His beautiful home, where he signed onto duty, where he believed, that his rank in his civilian life would ensure him a combat life worthy of the autobiography he would write, back on his home planet.

Instead, he was placed in charge of the 108th Penal Legion. By charter he was allowed to stop on any Imperial Planet and take any and all convicts as his recruits. Volnt had learned over the years that picking a few directly from the streets was a good way find "bosses," those middle men between he and the rest of the prisoners. His assignments came frequently from Holy Terra, and they were almost always covert, and always suicidal. Perfect for disposable troops. It also ensured that Volnt would never get to pen his memoirs. But no matter how much of a sacrifice it was to be assigned to the 108th Penal Legion, Volnt resigned himself with stoic finality that would had made his friends proud. It was little to be resigned too, in point of fact, Volnt knew of few other commissars who had direct control of an entire ship.

Volnt brought his mind back to focus on his surroundings again. His office was his mind. Everything was organized properly, slates stacked into those already read, and needing a response, those not needing any response. A single slate lay in the middle of the desk containing all known information on every single prisoner in the holds below. His gaze went from the slate, which he had read six times already, to his peaked cap sitting at the edge of the ashy gray desk. From where he sat the image made Volnt smile. It was worthy of a pic to hang on his wall; the contrast of his polished black boots and matte black cap inlaid with the skull motif of the Commissariat on top of light gray wood was striking.

Volnt's smile faded. He would have to address the prisoner's soon. While he held no fear of the prisoners below, in his experience, the next few hours would determine who would be most likely to revolt. Just as likely as it was for street picked convicts to become "bosses" they were just as likely to start a riot. He would watch closely. But Commissar Adrian Volnt had done this forty-two time before. And he was still alive, and they were all dead. So it would be with this round of convicts.

Volnt pushed the amasec onto his desk and stood up. Donning his greatcoat, he left it unbuttoned. Better to see the bolt pistol in it holster and the gleaming power sword tucked in its scabbard. He pulled his cap low over his eyes, then pulled it back so that the brim was at the horizon only if he tipped his head halfway back, and walked out of his office.

Volnt did not have to think about what he was going to say. He had said it many times before, and with little variation from each successive generation. However, the speech ran itself over in his mind twice before Volnt finally made it to where the prisoners were being held.

"Attention on deck!" snapped a guard precisely as Volnt entered. The guards were expecting Volnt's return. The prisoners were not. All eyes turned however, mostly because there had not been anything new to look at in fifteen hours.

"That may have been the first time you convicts have heard that, so I will forgive you this once, your lack of response. From this point on, you will respond immediately when I, or any of my guards, address you or give you a command. Now I am going to ask you if you understand what I just said to you. You are to reply, 'Yes, Sir.'" Volnt spoke at a less than normal volume, not a whisper, but less volume than you would expect in such an address. The effect was wrought with great care, each of the prisoners straining to hear the commissar's words whether or not they could actually see him. The acoustics of the room ensured that even the last row of prisoners would be able to hear well the commissar's low voice.

As Volnt spoke he paced the in front of the prisoners, his arms tucked behind his back exposing his side arm and sword, now he stopped. He turned to face them, leaned forward and said in the same voice, "Do you understand what I have just said to you?"

"Yes, sir." Audible only because there was no other noise in the room but surrurration of 200 plus men breathing in one confined space.

"Pathetic." Volnt sighed and began pacing again.

"Each one of you is guilty of some violent crime. Most of you probably multiple violent crimes. Some of you were caught in the act of said crime." Volnt paused in speech and step. "Your sentence is death, and I am your warden. Do you understand what I have just said to you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Still pathetic." Volnt stopped, "My name is Commissar Adrian Volnt, and you are newest recruits of the 108th Penal Legion, affectionately known as the Black Rats. My word is law here. You will do what I tell you to. Not because I am wearing this uniform, or that I have weapons on me, or even that one of my guards would shoot you for disobeying me. No, you will do what I tell you to, because when we are in combat what I tell you to do will keep you alive." Volnt resumed his pacing.

"Oh yes, we will be going into battle, but keeping you alive longer keeps me alive. Do you understand what I have just told you?"

The response was somewhat more emphatic. Volnt continued, "The mission of the 108th is cleansing and occasionally recon. Even more rarely will we be called into combat within a warzone. You will not become heroes of the Imperium in a battle of glory defending a holy shrine and receiving a pardon for your sins as payment. We will be a nameless Imperial Guard unit to anyone who sees us. But we will be given the most difficult missions to accomplish. This is your death sentence." Volnt stopped pacing again, inhaled.

Some of the prisoners cocked their head, or strained to see what they could only hear, waiting to hear the commissar ask his question so they could respond.

Instead Volnt continued pacing. "Make no mistake this is a death sentence. You will rotate or volunteer for missions that are classified at the highest rate of casualties expected. You would probably refer to them as suicidal. Now you may be thinking but why don't I just kill you and you team Commissar Volnt? You wont for a couple of reasons.

"The first is you know that if you attacked me alone you would not survive the attack. Either I or one of my team or even one of the other prisoner's would kill you. It would do you no good.

"The second is you could never trust enough of you fellow convicts to organize a riot and overtake the ship. If you show enough brains and muscle to try and pull that off, you will find yourself promoted. I have seen six riots break out, two in this room, in fact. The guards were ordered to fire indiscriminately at the mob. As you can see, they are elevated, you are not. Only a few survived the riot, but the mission was completed before we gathered new recruits.

"And you would not succeed if you tried to flee in the midst of conducting a mission. Most likely you would be shot by one of your own team before you took your fourth step for betraying their position.

"But this reason I think is the most important. Before you awoke today you were just a criminal. Instead of rotting in a cell, each of you will experience something that the arbites will never experience. You'll see things that Imperial Guardsmen will never see. Some of you will have that experience for only a very very short time before you die. But each of you will get that experience at least once before your death sentence is carried out. And if you use this chance as repentance for your crime, that is between you and the Emperor. But you would not be just a criminal anymore. The Emperor protects."

Volnt stopped bowed his head. "There is of course yet one last reason not to try to escape, kill me or riot. Each of you has had a small device implanted into the base of your skull. It is a bomb designed to sever your spine from your brain. To detonate it I speak a sub-vocal code. Then bang, I send your arse on a first class trip to being dead."

Volnt began pacing again, making eye contact with as many of the prisoners as he could. "I also have the code to detonate all of them simultaneously. I threatened the use of this device as a last resort. Act with discipline and, for whatever reason you choose to, accept your sentence, and you will no longer be treated as a prisoner. Otherwise you will be drugged like you were before, awoken at the onset of your next mission, and if you survive drugged again until needed.

"Do you understand what I have just told you?"

"Yes, sir!" Louder now, the understanding beginning to sink into the prisoners' minds.

"You will find that punishment, when it is meted out, is particularly severe. I see the stun batons have knocked a few of you out cold already. Until further notice speak only when spoken to. While I will not treat you like a prisoner, if you do not act like one, you must remember that you are. Do what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do and your execution will not be at my hands."

Volnt smiled, "Think over what I have said to you. I am going to instruct the guards to remove your wrist restraints and move to the second tier. Don't make them shoot you."

Volnt turned to exit the room, but stopped before he had taken two steps. "I said there was no chance for a pardon, but I misspoke. There is one way. Should I be killed in combat, you will be granted a pardon if you can complete the mission. But take that thought from your head, I have led forty two generations of convicts."

Commissar Volnt resumed his stride and left the room. He replayed the speech in his mind as he walked back to his office. The glowglobes ignited as he entered and walked to his cogitator, spoke a prayer to awake the machine spirit and typed a code logging him on. Volnt pulled up a vid screen of the prisoner's room. Multiple sensor readings were displayed. If one of the convicts did decide to revolt, Volnt would know before even the convict knew about it himself.

Volnt removed his cap, placed it on the edge of his ironwood desk, and poured a deep glass of the amasec he had been drinking before. He sat back down in his chair, put his feet back up on the desk next to his cap and watched the vid screen for the tell tale signs. Using voice commands, Volnt brought the focus on one of the convicts. He pulled up the prisoner's dossier from the single slate on the center of his desk..

"Hmmm. Axtyl, Yaniman. I remember you. Yes you are one I need to keep an eye on, I think."

The two seemed to stare at each other through the vid screen.


End file.
